Starter engages when hooking up negative battery cable

[Shadowfax]

Ok folks,
Probably a dumb one here, but it's got me stumped. I'm the "proud" owner of a 94 OMC 3.0 Cobra. I had to pull the motor to replace an expansion plug at the rear of the block. After putting the motor back in and making sure all was hooked up, then replacing the vertical drive, I go to hook up the battery...positive first then negative. When I touched the negative cable the post, the starter tried to engage. I did it a couple of more times, and it did the same, it even arcs to the terminal leaving little weld marks. Ran fine before pulling the motor, and I think I hooked up everything the same. One thing I noticed after referencing the shop manual, the yellow/red wire from the starter is run to the smaller terminal on the solenoid attached to the starter. In the manual, it shows the y/r going to the solenoid which is mounted on the engine. Any ideas what might be causing it to try to start? Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[gm280]

Re: Starter engages when hooking up negative battery cable

Sounds like you are engaging the starter solenoid when you attach the ground wire at the battery. That means you have the solenoid wired incorrectly. So check everything out with your wiring to and from the solenoid AND the starter itself... No other way to have it try to start by just connecting up the battery...

 

[Shadowfax]

Re: Starter engages when hooking up negative battery cable

Sounds like you are engaging the starter solenoid when you attach the ground wire at the battery. That means you have the solenoid wired incorrectly. So check everything out with your wiring to and from the solenoid AND the starter itself... No other way to have it try to start by just connecting up the battery...

Thanks for the reply GM...that's what I figured was wrong...it's just that it was starting fine before the motor pull. The only wires I disconnected were the ground from the battery, the positive from the battery, the ground for the tilt/trim, the large master harness plug, and the small engine ground to the outdrive. I remember when I first got the boat, I had to replace the starter and the original wiring was battery + to starter, battery- to block, the red/yellow from the positive terminal went to the small screw on the starter mounted solenoid and the large red from the large terminal on the starter solenoid. I will try to u/l some photos of the current configuration. (If I can figure it out!)